Increase Your Personal Productivity

Your body is like a machine that uses food, water and rest to generate energy that you then use to accomplish important tasks in your life and work.

One of the most important requirements for being happy and productive is for you to guard and nurture your energy levels at all times.

The rule is that your productivity begins to decline after eight or nine hours of work. For this reason, working long hours into the night, although it is sometimes necessary, means that you are usually producing less and less in more and more time. The more tired you get, the worse is your work and the more mistakes you make. At a certain point, like a battery that is run down, you can reach “the wall” and simply be unable to continue.

The fact is that you have specific times during the day when you are at your best. You need to identify these times and discipline yourself to use them on your most important and challenging tasks.

Most people are at their best in the mornings, after a good night’s sleep. Some people are better in the afternoons. A few people are most creative and productive in the evenings or late at night.

A major reason for procrastination is fatigue, or attempting to start on a task when you are tired out. You have no energy or enthusiasm. Like a cold engine in the morning, you can’t seem to get yourself started.

Whenever you feel overtired and overwhelmed with too much to do and too little time, stop yourself and just say, “All I can do is all I can do.”

Sometimes the very best use of your time is to go home early and go to bed and sleep for ten hours straight. This can completely recharge you and enable you to get two or three times as much done the following day, and of a far higher quality, than if you had continued working long into the night.

According to many researchers, the average American is not getting enough sleep relative to the amount of work he or she is doing. Millions of Americans are working in a state of mental fog as the result of working too much and sleeping too little.